The yearly franchise returns as Infinity Ward takes it’s turn at improving the already tried and tested formula of online multiplayer. With new weapons, maps, game types and more customisation to shake a boom-stick at, this one’s looking promising.
As opposed to diving in at the deep end, I thought I’d dip my toe in the singleplayer first and get acquainted the old school way. We follow the story of David ‘Hesh’ Walker, his brother Logan and father Elias, a retired former Captain in the U.S. Army. The new parallel universe situation being that South America, rich from it’s harbouring oil reserves, becomes a dominant superpower with it’s eyes on America. After a brief, fatherly story explaining the merits and legends of Ghosts, all hell breaks loose as the newly formed Federation takes control of the ODIN satellite’s offensive weaponry and wreaks destruction upon America.
Taking approximately 8 hours to complete, you’ll find yourself in a myriad of situations and scenarios over the span of the campaign. Underwater battles involve steering clear of the notoriously deadly, man-eating sharks before having a submerged fire fight with other scuba divers. Slower bullet projectiles and less weapon damage, along with being able to move freely in all three dimensions equates for an interesting battle. The obligatory stealth mission returns with bushes to crawl through, patrolling guards and an invisible waypoint to find. Vehicle missions are as bombastic as ever, proving how much damage you can potentially wreak with air support. On occasions where nothing too ridiculous is on screen, our furry friend Riley occasionally pops in for a bark and a throat grab. Stealth sections where you control him were a little underused, but great fun. Barking to get someone’s attention before flanking round and pouncing for the kill, is even more satisfying when you realise even a dog can outsmart the generic goons.
Unfortunately, unlike Black Ops 2, there are no branching storylines, no scoring system and no challenges to tempt you back for another run. There are collectibles but these are few and far between, which for me, is a bonus at least! Aside from the slightly predictable, throwaway plot, I will say that I enjoyed my scripted romp through the campaign probably more than any recent Call of Duty I can remember. Being able to equip a target finding LMG on Black Ops 2 made the campaign (and multiplayer) a joke, so it’s nice to see the back of that!
In an effort to claw some users back from the unrelenting zombies fanbase, Extinction has been introduced in Ghosts. With only the one map for the time being, Extinction sees you performing an objective based, wave survival mode against aliens. A progression system involving creating a basic loadout with unlockable content gives you a real incentive to progress in this mode as opposed to restarting from scratch each time. In-game challenges ensure it doesn’t tire as quickly; seeing as you can actually complete it, (bring good teammates!) the overall goal hastens the pressure and desire to do well. Much like Treyarch’s counterpart, guns are available to buy and secrets can be found. Unlike Zombie’s, other things can be bought with the money earned, dependant on your class loadout, you can deploy ammo packs, user controlled turrets and the like to hopefully make defending the hive drill that bit easier.
For those not fully prepared for the sheer brutality of online competition, Squads make their appearance. Essentially combat training from Black Ops, players can now customise their teams weapons and perks and face off against other peoples offerings. With plenty of modes, including a somewhat nondescript, hidden, wave survival mode, players can level up their online profile this way. The new enemy AI can be extremely competent in this guise, depending on what weapon they have equipped, they can quickscope, camp, jump shot and all the rest. Whilst there’s no way to alter or ‘train’ your comrades for specific modes or situations, there’s definitely some promise here. It can genuinely be difficult to tell them apart from humans at times.
Onto the real meat and bones of what makes Call of Duty so devilishly successful, the online multiplayer. Changing things up again; building upon Black Ops 2’s Pick 10 system, Infinity Ward has opted for largely the same idea, however instead of everything costing the same, the perks are valued differently upon their strength. Your primary weapon costs one point, you may equip up to two attachments for ‘free’ but after that, everything costs. Sidearms, explosives and tactical grenades can be deselected in favour of more perks and vice versa. With around 35 perks to choose from, it’s now more difficult than ever to make that perfect class. Weapons are now not unlocked via level progression but instead, solely by squad points, meaning you get more choice in weapon selection at the start. Being able to unlock the ‘final’ gun in a class after an hour or so of playing is empowering yet slightly overwhelming; if anything I still prefer the old ways in that respect. Unfortunately, having them unlocked via this method means there isn’t a huge sense of uniqueness between weapons. There’s balancing to an extent, and then there’s no discernable difference.
By past Call of Duty standards, the maps are enormous; this works both in it’s favour and against. There is an inevitable amount of camping whilst the traffic patterns are learnt; due to the insane speed you can die from unknown locations, it can often be tedious to have to navigate the breadth of the map to find some action again. This however, is not always the case, the mind boggles at how often you can spawn mere feet from enemies on maps this large, boggling and infuriating. Some other minor annoyances include the lack of any ping indicator or strength of connection, admittedly, with dedicated servers being rolled out, the general connection has been outstanding, much to the malign of Black Ops 2!
On the plus side, ever the bane of not the person using them, there are no target finders this time around, which is nice! New game modes like cranked, where everyone runs around like headless chickens until their 30 second lifespan expires is entertaining if not a little chaotic. Blitz is a more refined capture the flag, with players having to run into the opponents endzone to score. A new take on search and destroy where players drop a tag upon death that can be picked up by a teammate for a revival keeps things tense. The killstreak system from MW3 returns with multiple ways to benefit your team if you run the Support packages, Assault streaks will reward you with offensive, often explosive results whilst the Specialist gains more perks for their efforts.
Ghosts is graphically fine, there are a few standout moments from the campaign that look especially pretty, but some of the weapon models lack imagination, the new AK looks like a hideous trapezoid for example. The sound is up there with the best, with effects being altered depending on your location. The next gen versions will, along with crisper visuals, also support ground war matches (9v9) to fill the empty spots in the maps too.
All in all, another solid, if not too original offering. Veterans will appreciate the changes more than others; it can take a little getting used to. Customisation runs deep, even if unlocking items can be a pain due to the iffy challenges section, but at least you can choose to play as a female now. Some of the rougher points being that the snipers are a little too easy to use, one shot kills can occur from below the waist which is ridiculous; along with the lack of time it takes to scope in can lead to frustrating deaths. There also isn’t a way to look over an extensive selection of stats outside of the companion app, giving little to do between matches. Oh, and a ‘mute all’ button on the lobby screen would be nice too, for obvious reasons!
Reviewed on PS3, also available on Xbox 360, PC and Wii U. Versions will also be available on PS4 and Xbox One.
